Work, life, and culture in Japan and Asia

I'm not a legal expert. Please use the links on this page and seek your own legal advice.

I'm glad you're here reading this. Firstly, using someone else's photos without their permission is theft and a breach of copyright. The founders of Google never gave away their product, they did look to sell it, but never did they give it away. Why should photographers allow their products to be appropriated? Want another analogy? Consider the music industry and the publishing industry. One doesn't tolerate free downloads and file sharing, and the other doesn't tolerate plagiarism and copying. Why should photographers and photography be any different.

Why should you care about your images being stolen? Simple, go to PhotoShelter, and type in something random like these in the table below:

Another good source for valuing photos is Photographers Index. Also consider your costs, below is a quote from Editorial Photographers:

If you do find your work stolen, what can you do?

1. Firstly, according to Ed Greenburg (a photography lawyer from New York, see link below), don't approach the offender.

2. Gather evidence, get your friends in other parts of the country or the world to gather evidence for you as well.

3. Contact a lawyer (you apparently don't stand a chance by yourself). Have your lawyer write a legal letter that tells the company that they're in breach of copyright, and that you're demanding to take them to court. If you go alone, they'll apparently want to avoid this and palm you off, but it's harder for them to shake a lawyer, so they'll probably suggest a settlement. If it does go to court, in the US you'd get USD$13,000 per licence breach (that is, per variety of product that they're using your image on, according to Dan Heller, see link below).

Apparently, if they don't tell you all the uses your image had been used for, after your lawyer has asked for a full list of breaches, and the settlement is complete, then you can get them for fraud (and perhaps get a very rewarding out of court settlement).

For more information, see the these:

> PhotoShopTV interview with photography and copyright lawyer Ed Greenburg, it's a brilliant interview.

> Dan Heller's extensive notes on this, page 1, and page 2.

> And the best resource seems to be this: http://www.editorialphoto.com/copyright/. Also see Blacklisted Photo Competitions here.

Please don't do nothing, it'd be supporting the vandalism of our industry, and be making it harder for us to buy new equipment, and run a business by devaluing our products.